QianlongSkilfully formed from a large boulder into a circular screen, exquisitely worked in varying levels of relief on both sides, the front with an evocative landscape scene of lush pine trees over distant hills on one side, in which six heavily armed figures on horseback are depicted hunting deer, a lone horseman appearing from the rocky crevasse ushering a family of deer towards open grounds, an elderly bearded horseman armed with a forked spear and his entourage issuing order to give chase, the horseback archer riding off in pursuit of the pair of stray deer with his bow and arrow stretched in firing position, another two heroic horsemen armed with forked spear and swirling mace breaking pursuit from chasing a pair of deer to encircle a ferocious tiger, the beast with powerful hind legs in aggressive stance and its head turned left, the reverse worked with an additional landscape scene portraying a herd of horses resting beside a stream, individually grazing on grass, galloping freely or lying recumbent, the stone of intensely rich olive green hue, elaborate carved wood stand.25.8cm diam. (2).

Footnotes

The current lot is representative of some of the highest quality workmanship on jade in the Imperial ateliers during the Qianlong period. Only a small number of examples of table screens of such calibre is recorded, and it is probable that this screen once graced the desk of a high-ranking official or member of the Imperial family. The landscape scenes are highly evocative, drawing the viewers in with a hypnotic feeling of grandeur, and, as Carol Michaelson argues in the introduction, enabling a desk-bound official to indirectly experience the rural idyll, "dreaming himself into the sort of scenery of the place he would like to retire to".

An almost identical Imperial spinach jade circular table screen featuring the scene of Shoulao greeting Xiwangmu (Queen Mother of the West), from the Sir John William Buchanan-Jardine (1900-1969) collection, was sold in these rooms, 4 December 2008, lot 204 (fig.1). Compare another spinach jade circular table screen depicting Shoulao greeting Xiwangmu in the Sir John Mullens collection, illustrated by Stanley C. Nott, Chinese Jade Throughout the Ages. A Review of Its Characteristics, Decoration, Folklore and Symbolism, Tokyo, 1962, p.147, pl.CXXX. See also a spinach green jade 'peony' circular screen with a very similar wood stand to the current lot from the Heber R. Bishop (1840-1902) collection (fig.2), housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number 02.18.469.

Yang Boda, emeritus Director of the Palace Museum, Beijing, specifically refers to this piece in The Glorious Age of Chinese Jades, London, 1991, p.183, as 'a superb example of 18th century jade-workmanship, a kind typically found in the Imperial Palace, Beijing'.

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